


Differential

by Cheloya



Category: Pet Shop of Horrors
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-10-27 06:50:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10803990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheloya/pseuds/Cheloya
Summary: Old, imported. Nothing brings a family together like math homework.





	Differential

D stared at the telephone. The telephone did not stare back, but the impression was similar. His hand hovered over the receiver, still hesitant, for all the times he’d told himself it would simply have to be done. Any other option had been exhausted hours ago, and Chris had been stirred into a slightly teary-eyed panic, though he still refused to find a proper tutor.  
  
He was so like his brother, sometimes.  
  
Though D could not very well chastise him for stubbornness when he, himself, was also being stubborn. And so, with huge and fretful blue eyes urging him on, D picked up the receiver and pinned it, with his shoulder, to his ear. He dialed, and swallowed, and listened to the electronic tone.  
  
Three rings, and a soft click. “Hello.” Not a question. The voice sounded far away. D swallowed again, and was mildly perplexed when he spoke by the way his voice seemed to echo unnaturally in the speaker.  
  
“Father.”  
  
“My son.” There were brief clattering noises, and his father’s voice became abruptly closer and clearer – and considerably more enthusiastic. “What a pleasant surprise.”  
  
“Yes,” D agreed, only mildly insincere. Speaking with his father was always awkward, and sometimes worrying, but some part of him still found their conversations soothing. “I wonder if I might… that is, I’m afraid I have a favour to ask of you.”  
  
“A favour, my son?” His father’s voice turned wry in his ear, and secretive. “My, what sort of favour? Something your grandfather shouldn’t hear…?”  
  
D’s lips pursed, and he could feel a flush that no one else would notice creep over his face. “Nothing like that,” he said, distastefully, and his father laughed delightedly.  
  
“I’ll walk,” he promised in a voice still shivering with amusement. “Do you still like peaches?”  
  
D opened his mouth to say that food really wasn’t necessary, as with any luck he would not be staying very long, but the worried way that Chris was biting his lip (and the soft curses of a frustrated Leon in the background) persuaded him to reconsider his words. “Peaches would be lovely,” he agreed, thinly, and hung up.  
  
\- - -  
  
The peaches were lovely. The faces Leon was making over them (and the flan, and the biscuits, and the peppermint tea) were decidedly not so. He was sure that the sly expression on his father’s face was helping absolutely no one’s temper, let alone his own, and really, what on earth had prompted him to resort to these methods? He should have… he should have…  
  
“So, what is this favour?” The elder D posed the cheerful question. “I do hope I can help.” On D’s shoulder, Q snorted derisively, but kept her thoughts to herself. D quieted her absently with a touch of his fingers, and wondered at the expression on his father’s face.  
  
“I’m afraid,” he replied briskly, “that young Christopher has a problem that neither Mr Orcot, nor myself, can solve.” His father raised both eyebrows and turned violet eyes upon the younger, paler Orcot, who was not grimacing quite as much as his brother, and then held out a long, slender hand. D resisted his initial impulse to snatch the boy away.  
  
“What problem might that be?” his father prompted gently, and Chris held out the math book, and the page of scribbles that had been all of his, and all of Leon’s, and all of D’s attempts at the problem in question.  
  
“We have no idea how to do question eight,” he said, very seriously, and very much on the verge of panic, “and I have an exam in four days and my teacher said I should have asked earlier and he won’t help me out because he’s a je—” Glance at D. “…busy, busy guy.”  
  
There was a pause. D tried not to look as embarrassed as he felt at the expression of mild surprise his father shot him across the table. Fortunately, Leon saved him with an extremely ungracious, “Heard you were some kinda whiz at this stuff, so we figured we’d better ask you before I talked to the teacher.” ‘Talked to’, D was sure his father understood, could be replaced with ‘capped’.  
  
But he didn’t appear to be paying very much attention to Leon – or at least, he didn’t appear to be paying much attention to Leon that was not also focused on D. And after a moment or two, he smiled, and drew Chris closer, and peered down at the question curiously. One hand went up to tuck his far longer hair behind one ear, and then he made a soft sound of easy comprehension – as D had known he would.  
  
“This is just a matter of simplification,” he assured Chris calmly. “Find me a pen, and some less, ah,” – a glance at the much-abused notebook – “Some less _tired_ paper. I’ll take you through it.”  
  
D breathed a sigh of relief.  
  
\- - -  
  
They stayed there on the lounge for most of the afternoon, D’s father taking Chris through the steps on paper instead of using the calculator (as Chris insisted they were allowed to do). Not because he eschewed the technology, he explained, but because it would help Chris work out what to do with more difficult problems if he understood exactly what the calculator was doing, too.  
  
The detective sat opposite them, grimacing with every sip of peppermint tea, but he had the day off and he’d promised Chris he’d be around if the kid needed a hand with anything. Even if D’s dad was a fucking genius, and Chris clearly needed no further aid.  
  
Eventually, when Chris was sent back to the table proper to work through more problems on his own, Leon was forced to make conversation.  
  
“So you’re a scientist or something, huh?” he prompted, after a few minutes of the guy – _also_ named D, and how confusing-slash-egotistical was that – just smiling quietly and enjoying the tea and the exorbitant spread of cakes and sweets in silence.  
  
“Something like that, yes,” Daddy D agreed, with a single fluid nod. “And you are a police officer, no? Do I want to know how you came to know my son?” The teasingly scandalised tone said very clearly that he _did_ , and Leon snorted. At least this guy was a little easier to read than the Count was.  
  
All the same, he didn’t want to cause trouble for the Count in his own family – Leon knew what that was like – so he shrugged.  
  
“He sold pets to a few people that died,” he said, offhand as he could make it when he’d been after the guy for coming up on eight years now. Not so actively any more, true, but he still had hope that one day a break was coming. Yeah. “Helped clear up a few other cases over the years, and, uh, I guess… I guess that’s it, really.” Man, but that made their whole… _them_ sound pretty lame.  
  
Daddy D beamed over the rim of his teacup. “I’m glad to hear he’s doing his part in society,” he said, more than pleased. “And it is so good to see an officer who is not afraid to rely on unorthodox sources of information.”  
  
Leon might’ve asked him what he meant by that, exactly, had not D poked his head in from the kitchen, disapproval clear in his voice. “I hope you’re both behaving,” he cautioned them while he dried a frypan, and Daddy D quirked an eyebrow at Leon.  
  
“And have you proposed yet?” he asked candidly, and laughed when Leon spat his tea across the table.  
  
\- - -  
  
Chris had not _hugged_ him before he retired for the night, but it had been a thing but narrowly escaped. D had received a kiss to the cheek, and had kissed the top of Chris’ scruffy head, as was his wont, because the extent of Leon’s affections tended toward the rough, tough, manly-man end of the spectrum, and generally incorporated knuckling Chris’ skull into the hug’s routine. Leon had merely ruffled his hair tonight, of course, put off more dramatic affections by the company, and told the boy to get some sleep.  
  
And Chris had turned to D’s father and bent down almost as though he was going to kiss the elder D on the cheek as well, almost before he remembered himself. Like any true Orcot, though, he caught himself and just thanked the older man politely, gratefully. “You totally saved my ass,” he confessed jubilantly, to a disapproving _Christopher!_  
  
“You are most welcome,” his father had told the child, touching one lightly freckled cheek. “I’m sure your examination will go swimmingly.” And Chris had gone off to bed with Tetsu and Pon-chan oddly quiet at his heels, and D had worried after all that this had not gone quite as well as he had hoped. His father did not appear to want to leave, and if he truly did not want to do so, then that could be quite a serious problem.  
  
“I suppose it’s about time I headed for home,” the elder D sighed, as if sensing D’s thoughts, regret held carefully in check. “My animals will be wondering what has become of me.”  
  
Leon, still recovering from an extended sulk, muttered something about giving him a lift if he needed it, and was lightly rebuffed: “Nonsense, nonsense. It’s such a pleasant temperature at the moment, it would be a terrible shame to waste it in a car.”  
  
D saw his father to the door, and hovered there, awkwardly, as the elder D faced him, violet eyes oddly open. D tried not to notice the patient sadness there, or the simmering edge of hysteria.  
  
“I expect I will not see you for some time,” his father said, more cautiously now that they were alone. “I know you are taking good care of each other.”  
  
D’s expression tightened momentarily. “It’s nothing like that,” he reiterated, and sighed, one hand to his temple. “I... thankyou, baba, for today. Sometimes it makes no sense to me.” More than Chris’ math problems, at that. He bowed, stiff and formal.  
  
“It’s all in simplification,” the elder assured him with a hollow kind of smile. He leaned forward suddenly, and D flinched as a kiss – much like the one he had given Chris – was pressed to his forehead. He sighed, and resigned himself to the contact. Far be it from his father to follow social norms.  
  
The violet eyes were brighter as his father drew away, and D blinked as his father graced him with an equally humble, deferential bow. When he came upright again, his eyes were suspiciously moist, and for a moment D felt a similar grief gnaw at his ribcage. He ignored it.  
  
“I am glad you came to me, my son,” his father murmured, his gratitude unadorned. “Until we next meet, I wish you good fortune. Stay safe.”  
  
D’s fingers fiddled with the fabric across his thighs. “You too, baba,” he allowed after a moment, and found himself smiling briefly at the simple pleasure on his father’s face as the elder D turned away – it dropped from his face with startlement when the other man turned back, suddenly, as though he had forgotten something important. “Father?”  
  
“And _remember_ ,” his father insisted, one finger in the air, “to invite me. I will never forgive you, or your grandfather, if you don’t.”  
  
“Invite?” D echoed, blankly. “To what?”  
  
“To the wedding, of course.” His father tossed his head disdainfully, and turned away again. “And at least give me some time to plan some sort of reception. Your pet, in there, looks rather like the shotgun sort.”  
  
He felt the blood drain from his face, and then come rushing back again, but by the time he had regained control of his tongue, his father was too far down the street to properly appreciate a retort.  
  
D closed the door, and locked it, and vowed to speak to that Green fellow at the earliest possible opportunity.


End file.
